Lectures: On the Present Position of Catholics in England

by John Henry Newman

The Lectures on the Present Position of Catholics in England is John Henry Newman's brilliant satirical attack on anti-Catholic prejudice and propaganda. The lectures appeared at a time of national uproar, the "Papal Aggression" crisis of 1850-51, and they landed Newman in court for libel. Aimed at a popular audience, they are supremely readable, at times shocking, and certainly the most humorous of any of Newman's writings. Yet they are less well known today than his other works and until now have only been intermittently available. Newman himself thought they were his best-written work, and the leading Newman scholar, Ian Ker, has called them a "neglected satirical masterpiece".

Genres: Theology, Religion

210 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman was an important figure in the religious history of England in the 19th century. He was known nationally by the mid-1830s.
Originally an evangelical Oxford University academic and priest in the Church of England, Newman then became drawn to the high-church tradition of Anglicanism. He became known as a leader of, and an able polemicist for, the Oxford Movement, an influential and controversial grouping of Anglicans who wished to return to the Church of England many Catholic beliefs and liturgical rituals from before the English Reformation. In this the movement had some success. However, in 1845 Newman, joined by some but not all of his followers, left the Church of England and his teaching post at Oxford University and was received into the Catholic Church. He was quickly ordained as a priest and continued as an influential religious leader, based in Birmingham. In 1879, he was created a cardinal by Pope Leo XIII in recognition of his services to the cause of the Catholic Church in England. He was instrumental in the founding of the Catholic University of Ireland, which evolved into University College Dublin, today the largest university in Ireland.

Newman was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on 19 September 2010 during his visit to the United Kingdom. He was then canonised by Pope Francis on 13 October 2019.

Newman was also a literary figure of note: his major writings including the Tracts for the Times (1833–1841), his autobiography Apologia Pro Vita Sua (1865–66), the Grammar of Assent (1870), and the poem The Dream of Gerontius (1865),[6] which was set to music in 1900 by Edward Elgar. He wrote the popular hymns "Lead, Kindly Light" and "Praise to the Holiest in the Height" (taken from Gerontius).

Reviews

[Darrick Taylor]

Newman's lectures on the state of Catholics during the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy in England in 1851 is an interesting account of how Newman explains to his fellow priests of the Oratory in Birmingham why they are perceived as pariahs by their fellow countrymen and women. The move by the papacy to restore a Catholic hierarchy of bishops in England caused no small amount of outrage, and sparked calls for legal measures to be taken against Catholicism in England, and started a wave of negative opinion and propaganda against it as well. In several lectures, Newman tried to show that British Protestants' understanding of Catholicism was actually a misunderstanding, based on prejudice, ignorance, and what he calls the "Protestant tradition" of blaming all things on papists. Newman's depiction of why his faith and its adherents were under such pressure from public opinion is fascinating, and reminds one of Rene Girard's work on scapegoatin, so thoroughly does he describe the mindset that prevented Protestants of his day from comprehending what the Catholic Church actually teaches. It reminds me of the way certain people have misunderstandings about Islam, based on prejudice and false depictions of that religion, in America. This book is especially interesting for Catholics, as Catholic beliefs about sexuality are certain make faithful Catholics more and more a minority in the Western world going forward, for what Newman says about hwo Catholics are to defend themselves in such a climate. Well worth one's time.